Saturday, 24 October 2009

On the 8th of October I was given my first brief for Level 4 Introductory Studies, the title was Political Postcard. The brief was extracted from Visual Literacy by Wilde and Wilde. The idea behind the brief was that, as graphic designer, we should be aware and observe the environment in which we live. Also we should understand that the opinions we have of our environment are not the same as other peoples, and I was to communicate how I felt on an issue, in this case a political one. We were to choose a significant political issue, past or present, research into the issue, and then using the facts, our ideas and opinions create a postcard communicating them.

My chosen issue was CCTV and how, for the number there are, they are pretty useless stopping crime. After playing around with several ideas I settled with the idea of idioms describing how I felt about CCTV, such as 'As useful as a chocolate teapot' or 'As useful as a handbrake on a canoe'. My first attempt was to visually represent the idioms, for example I created a 'chocolate teapot' in Photoshop but at my tutorial it was commented that it was not obvious enough and looked too much like a 'brown teapot'. So I changed my approach to a more typographic one and listed the idioms. After experimenting with size and layout this is my final design.

Friday, 23 October 2009

Recently I went to London to visit the Design Museum, where two exhibitions were on display, Super Contemporary and Mariscal Drawing Life. I particularly enjoyed the Super Contemporary exhibition, which consisted of 15 commissions from some of London’s current and future designers. Designers included Paul Smith, Ron Arad and Thomas Heatherwick, with works that try to capture the spirit of London design, past, present and future. It was all set out in a huge time-line that ran around the edge of the exhibition space tying all the pieces together and sorting them into chronological order, which I thought was a nice touch. Pieces in-particular that I liked where Airside’s personal map of London. I have been a fan of Airside’s work for a while and it was interesting to see a more personal design from the company. They took the map added their own ‘Airside’ flair, with quirky characters and cute animals, but still left it fairly recognizable as a map of London.

Thursday, 22 October 2009

…and this is my ‘creative’ blog. This is a place where I plan on venting any creative juices and display anything I like, make, do, enjoy and so on. Pieces of inspiration, Uni work I’ve done, other work I’ve done and any other little things that I feel I want to put up. So if you check back there may be something of interest, or there might not, I don’t know!?!? Oh and this is me…